


As Though From a Dream

by Jaded



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: (sorta) - Freeform, Canon Compliant, Dreams, F/M, Soulmates AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 05:19:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10690575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaded/pseuds/Jaded
Summary: Cassian Andor doesn't believe in soulmates. So why does he dream about a green-eyed girl who just might be his?





	As Though From a Dream

**Author's Note:**

> From a prompt fill that came through my Tumblr (find me at @operaticspacetrash).

“You believe in soulmates, don’t you, Andor?”

 

Cassian is sixteen, still young enough that he hasn’t yet forgotten how to laugh.

 

“And you do, Martog?” he asks the skinny boy across from him in the mess hall of the latest Rebellion base on Talus.

 

Martog spoons a thick stew into his mouth and pouts. “I thought everyone believed in soulmates.”

 

“I believe in them,” Eller Myr says. Eller, who will not live to see twenty, pulls up the sleeve of his tunic to show them a purple mark near the crook of his elbow. It’s the size of thumbnail. If someone squinted and wanted to believe it hard enough, it could have been described as being shaped like a star. “It’s my soulmark. My _other_ will have the same one on their arm.”

 

“I thought you were supposed to know your soulmate by the first word they spoke to you,” Alicele Fosbos says. She pushes the blonde hair out of her eyes and frowns deeply.

 

Eller shakes his head. “No, it’s definitely by a soulmark.”

 

“But I don’t have a soulmark,” Alicele says, her face falling.

 

“Maybe it will appear soon,” Eller says, putting a comforting arm on her shoulder.

 

“What happens if your soulmates dies before you meet them?” Alicele asks, but Eller has no answer. Nobody has an answer. They don’t ask the question’s twin: _What happens if you die first?_

 

Martog glares at Cassian. “If you don’t believe in this, then what do you believe in then, Andor?”

 

This time, it is Eller who laughs at Martog. “Don’t you know already? He believes in the Rebellion. That’s his soulmate.”

 

Cassian blanks his face and takes a sip of water. He feigns a carefree shrug. He doesn’t tell them about the dark haired, green-eyed girl who haunts his dreams.

 

+

 

The first time he dreams of her, she’s running on a black sand beach. The waves crash, violent on the shore, and without knowing how, he knows she needs to stay away, that he needs to stay away. There are sneaker waves here that will tear a man out to sea and drown him before anyone even knows he is missing. But she seems to know this. She runs toward the moss-green mountains and he can almost feel the cool air on his skin. When she vanishes from his dream, he wakes.

 

She grows up with him. Her skinny legs and braided hair change into womanly curves and a severe bun on the back of her head. The land where he first dreams of her changes from fire and ice to jungle to desert. He knows her and he doesn’t know her. He wracks his memory, trying to think of where they might have met, where she can be placed in all his travels, but it’s a reflexive habit, him trying to apply logic to something knows has no logic.

 

For two months she visits him every night, but the dreams are awash in blood, and he wakes up, heart pounding. He requests a handful of sleep aids, and for the first week, he is dreamless. But when the pills run out, she returns, and for the first time he feels her make eye contact with him.

 

It is then that he hears his name on her lips. “Cassian?”

 

He jerks awake, drenched in a cold sweat. He requests more pills until eventually, he needs to see her again, until the sensation claws at him during his waking hours.

 

He has come to admit that she is always going to be a part of him. He just doesn’t know why. Not yet.

 

+

 

“We need to find Liana Hallik,” Draven says in the briefing. Cassian sits next to Alicele and Captain Rois, watching their silent nods.

 

On the screen, the dossier flashes with Hallik’s aliases, her list of crimes and last locations. And then the blue holo follows, blinking to life, a phantom from his dreams.

 

He feels the blood drain out of his face.

 

“That is, she goes by Hallik. Her real name is the one that is important: Jyn Erso, daughter of Galen Erso, Imperial scientist.”

 

Cassian struggles to find his voice. His tongue is twisted; his mouth is dry. The words burn as they leave his lips. “Let me do this, sir,” he says. “Let me find her.” Her face is etched on his heart. He could find her blindfolded or in the dark of space; he would find her or he would not stop until he did.

 

Draven won’t deny him this request—Cassian knows this. He is their best spy, by a mile. It is his job to have.

 

“Find her, then,” Draven says, shutting the screen down. “And bring her in.”

 

 _Bring her home_.

 

He dreams of her again that night. This time, he says her name, and she looks at him. _Jyn_.

 

+

 

“When was the last time you were in contact with your father?” he asks her. What he really wants to say is “How is it that you are real?”

 

+

 

He had expected her to return, and when she is gone too long, he goes to find her. Cassian finds Jyn in the cargo bay of the ship as it glides through the gate toward Scarif.

 

“You told everyone?” he asks, but he knows that she did. He can still feel where she squeezed his arm. There’s a heat burning in his belly, one that’s gone from ember to flame in the space of a week.

 

She holds her pendant in her hand and looks at him. “Do you believe in another life after this one?” she asks. She turns her eyes to him, and he sees the girl in his dreams.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Do you believe that after we die, we get to live again, somehow, maybe as someone else?”

 

“I’ve never thought about it,” he admits.  “You believe this?” he asks, as Bodhi brings the ship down to what Cassian knows to be a suicide mission. From her expression, he knows Jyn feels the same.

 

“I have to. How can it be fair that this is the only chance we get?”

 

_(We’ll take the next chance. And the next. On and on until the chances are spent.)_

 

+

 

He’s dying, but he’s not alone. His wound bleeds him of his energy, but Jyn carries him. _She carries him, she carries him._

 

In the turbolift, they can only look at one another and see the the life they should have had, the one together. He could kiss her. She could kiss him. But would it mean anything more than what they already share?

 

On the beach, she holds him close and tells him this: “I dreamed of you.” And he understands. It wasn’t just him all this time. It was her, too. It was always _them._

 

The rising wave approaches: water and land; the disappearing horizon.  

 

_Do you believe in another life after this one?_

 

_I have to. How can it be fair that this is the only chance we get?_

 

The light comes to swallows them whole, and he is filled with a strange and awful ache, one full of wonder and loss and pain. “Find me again,” he says softly, and he feels her tears against his face.

 

And before he draws his last breath in this life, he hears her answer, as though from a dream, a whispered _I will,_ and he finds that in that ache, there is peace, too.

 

 


End file.
